


A Glimpse Beyond Reality

by Naemi



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Cameo by Talia Hale, Finstock Family, Gen, Pre-Canon, Pre-Hale Fire, Trick or Treat 2018, Trick or Treat: Trick, a spoonful of canon divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 03:24:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16400426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naemi/pseuds/Naemi
Summary: What's shocking is that his mother hasn't onlynotlost her mind, but that she was right.





	A Glimpse Beyond Reality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cyren2132](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyren2132/gifts).



> Trick or Treat 2018 gift for **cyren2132**. I hope you enjoy =)

“Dad?”

No answer but the sound echoing through the old house.

“Mom?”

No answer still.

Bobby pushes the front door open, listens, hears nothing, enters the house—and there it is, faint, ghostlike, yet intense enough to make his hair stand on end: a moan, high-pitched and drawling to the extent that it makes his mother's voice barely recognizable.

He knows it's her, though, because his father called him, which hasn't happened since last Christmas.

_It's about your mother, Bobby. She's…_

_She's what—she sick or something?_

_I don't know … I don't know what's wrong with her._

She sounds sick now. Desperate. Forlorn. Almost like some soulless thing from a horror movie.

Bobby's feet move on their own; the well-trod hardwood floor creaks under his weight. One step, two, three, and then he hears that moan again, a little louder, maybe because he's closer now, already on the dimly lit stairs, or for a different reason entirely. Bobby can't tell. 

He hears the blood rushing in his ears, feels his heartbeat thumping in his temples, and for the first time in years, he's afraid. It isn't an adult's real life fear, one that chokes you and keeps you up at night because your entire life could change in a snap, for better or for worse—it's a ten-year-old's fear of the unknown, of the monster under the bed or in the closet or behind the treeline that will snatch you when the lights go out, that grips his heart in this moment.

He pauses at the top of the stairs.

“Dad?”

_She keeps saying … these things … I …_

“Mom?”

_Bobby, I think … I think she's lost her mind …_

Slowly, he approaches the lone window at the end of the hallway, and just as he steps into the square of light cast onto the old blue rug and reaches out to rap at his parents' bedroom door, the voice that's his mother's but somehow isn't issues a gut-wrenching, stomach-churning wail from inside the room.

Everything in Bobby screams to run away, but that feeling's gone the next moment. This is his _mother_ , he reminds himself, and she's obviously sick, and just because he spent the better part of last night watching creepy Halloween movies, as temporarily unemployed guys in their mid-twenties sometimes do, doesn't mean she's magically turned into a zombie overnight.

_Or does it?_

Squaring his shoulders, Bobby forces the hand that's been dangling in mid-air to push open the door.

When he pokes his head inside the room and sees his mother lying in bed with his father by her side—no blood or gore or other horror movie shit, just people, _just his family_ —he releases his tension on a long exhale. 

His father turns around and frowns. He beckons Bobby close the door and approach.

“How we doin'?” Bobby says as he crosses the distance between them. He was aiming for light-hearted and winces at how shaky his voice sounds.

“We had to sedate her.”

“So you _did_ call a doctor?”

Robert Finstock Senior gives his son a Look. “Of course I did.” And Bobby feels immediately defensive. He swallows any comment, however, for his mother extends a weak hand to him and says with a feeble voice, “Andrew …”

“No, mom.” He shakes his head. His mother's eyes are bright as ever, and he thinks it's odd that she doesn’t recognize him. Gently, he takes her hand in both of his. “It's me. Bobby.”

“I know, silly,” she says. She takes a slow, shallow breath, as if those three words have drained her of every ounce of energy she had left.

“You're too late.”

Barely a whisper.

“He's gone.”

Bobby doesn't think he heard her right. Leaning so close that his ear is almost touching his mother's lips, he asks, “What did you say, mom?”

“Andrew. He's gone. He died forty minutes ago.”

Bobby and his dad exchange a look. 

So she _had_ lost her mind. Great.

~ ~ ~

The following days pass in a blur of phone calls and funeral preparations. The news of Andrew's death wasn't shocking per se—he was a meth-head, God rest his soul, and as hard as it may have been, Bobby's gotten used to the thought of his brother's addiction killing him sooner or later.

What's shocking, and even more so the more he thinks about it, is that his mother hasn't only _not_ lost her mind, at least not according to the shrink that came and went. The point is, she was right. She _nailed_ the time of death.

Andrew had died while she was screaming and wailing and mumbling his name for minutes on end, until Bobby's father had first called him, then, probably reluctantly, Doc Fisher, who'd sedated Mrs. Finstock enough for the screaming to stop.

Bobby can't wrap his head around it. It's the grandmother of odd, the godfather of weird, and yeah, he could brush it off as a coincidence … but there's a little nagging voice in his head that won't let him. _Something's rotten in the state of Denmark_ , he thinks without a hint as to where to start looking for answers—or the actual question.

So time rolls by, and the day of Andrew's funeral comes and almost goes again without much fanfare. Almost.

It's late that afternoon, when Bobby's lost track of the number of hands he shook and condolences he accepted, the amount coffee he made and cake he sliced, after most people already left, that he notices his mother in deep conversation with a woman he doesn't recognize.

He moves closer as he picks up empty coffee cups, and while he stacks them neatly on a table that's close enough for him to get a good look on the woman's face, it strikes him: Talia Hale.

Or The Woman in the Woods, as he and his childhood friends used to call her with equal parts fear and reverence. Many of the kids back then, himself included, believed her to be some sort of witch because who else would live in the outskirts of the Beacon Hills Preserve with their entire family? 

The old stories about baby-eating satanic worshippers dancing naked under the full moon are nonsense, of course, but to this day, Bobby's kept thinking something must be up with the Hale family still, and seeing Talia, who's neither a friend of the family nor a member of his parents' church, is just the icing on a cake of _what the fuck is going on_.

He strains his ears, but the women speak in soft voices, and he can't make out more than scraps of their conversation: “… didn't think it would happen to me again …” (his mother with a deep frown), “It's a gift, but …” (Talia Hale with a smile), and more that almost makes sense but really doesn't.

Then, his mother lays a hand on Talia's arm, and Bobby, who's approached the scene slowly while piling up ever more dishes without once taking his eyes off the women, walks straight into a chair, loses his balance, manages not to fall, but fails to keep the china from spilling onto the floor.

Both women whip their heads toward the sound. 

_So much for stealth._

His mother shakes her head, and Talia Hale seems to suppress a smile.

Feeling like a no-good teenager, Bobby gives them an apologetic look and a lopsided grin that feels appropriately embarrassed. He crouches down, starts picking up the plates one by one, and then hears his mother say, “Frankly, I'm more concerned about you. I think you need to be careful.”

He hazards a glance and finds Talia Hale looking at his mother with wide, darkened eyes that may or may not hold a hint of genuine fear, extinct on a blink the next moment.

~ ~ ~

Bobby hears the sirens go off only seconds before his phone starts ringing. He might not even have noticed, for they're distant and moving away from his house, but when he answers the call and hears his father's voice, they're suddenly loud and clear in his ears.

“It's your mother. She's having a … _fit_ again.”

He doesn't listen further. He doesn't need to understand why or how, either; something deep inside him simply and suddenly accepts the fact that his mother has found some odd inner connection to impending doom. Or something like that, anyway. His knowledge about or understanding of it don't matter the smallest bit. 

_“Frankly, I'm more concerned about you.”_

Deep in his heart, he knows where the sirens are headed.

No need to watch the news tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the wonderful **Moit** , who also made sure all characters were returned unharmed.
> 
> [Visit my LJ-community [Bunny Bash](https://bunnybash.livejournal.com) to leave me a prompt at any time.]
> 
> [Feedback is love.]


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